A container for welding wire serves to accommodate a bulk welding wire coil used in automatic and semi-automatic welding processes. The container has two primary functions. First, the container serves as a means for transporting the welding wire coil and protecting it. In particular, the container is to be made sufficiently rigid to prevent the individual turns of the welding wire coil to be displaced one relatively to the other. Second, the container serves as take-out device allowing continuous withdrawal of the welding wire from the coil.
When the container is completely filled with the wire, the wire exerts a radial pressure into the side wall which tends to deform the polygonal container.
To avoid such deformation, EP 0 636 098 B1 suggests to place a stabilising device at each corner of the side wall which device extends upwardly from the bottom and comprises angular elements of folded cardboard and wooden boards accommodated in the angular elements.
It is one object of the present invention to provide a container for welding wire which can be filled with an increased mass of welding wire, which is easy and cheap in its manufacture and which has a high stability avoiding deformation and squeezing of the body due to the load of the wire.
It is a further object of the present invention to allow double stacking of containers when filled with welding wire without leading to a deformation of the lower container.
A further welding wire container which is known from WO 98/52844 has a body and a lid made of cardboard with two inspection windows allowing a limited view into the interior of the body. The container is shipped with the lid. However, the container requires to first remove the lid from the container, in order to insert a wire conduit device. The wire conduit device defines a separate, additional guide means between a retainer lying on the wire coil and the lid and it acts as a support frame for the lid. After opening the container and inserting the wire conduit device, the end of the wire is to be pulled through a sleeve of the wire conduit device and a guiding hole in the lid. Finally, the lid is re-mounted to the top of the container so as to close it again and prevent contamination of the interior of the container. However, the described procedure from opening to re-mounting of the lid is time-consuming. Further, it cannot be excluded that the container remains opened for some hours or days after removing the lid allowing dirt and moisture to enter into the container so that the wire is soiled or immediately oxidises. A further reason that the container according to the state of the art is opened by the purchaser of the container is that the inspection windows do not allow a complete inspection of the interior for initiating the welding process or during the welding process, in order to check the quality of the wire and the remaining content of the container, respectively.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a container for welding wire which allows to unwind wire in a minimum set-up time. Furthermore, contamination and oxidation of the wire should be excluded by avoiding opening of the container.